To be fully honest, Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy's shadow partly covered the competition. The four-time world champions from Germany left the field far more open than it looked before. For the first time in years, no world gold medalist took part in the competition.

Kavaguti and Smirnov continued to explore their string of all-time crowd pleaser musical scores -- this time, Johann Strauss' "Blue Danube." The pair hit its triple twist exactly on tempo and landed a well-synchronized parallel triple toe and throw triple loop to score 66.78 points and win the event.

Even though the Paris crowd did not quite buy their waltz, the pair also managed to devise their program in a way to emphasize their dancing tempo.

"We are happy with our performance," Kavaguti said. "Also, we scored much better than at Cup of China."

They got Level 4 for all their elements but for an unexpected one: Their death spiral was only credited with a Level 1. Asked what had caused it, Kavaguti blushed and Smirnov commented with a grin that could be interpreted like "That's life!"

Canadian champions Duhamel and Radford certainly offered the most beautiful program of the afternoon, set to music from crowd pleaser Charles Aznavour's "Ma Bohème." Duhamel fell on her triple Lutz, but the couple's program was perfect otherwise and was mostly very emotional throughout. These skaters have found a real chemistry between them, well balanced between complicity and unison.

They gained 62.28 points and a Level 4 for their death spiral, lift, step sequence and combination spin.

"We're still very disappointed by our program today," Duhamel said. "We want to skate perfect programs, and I can tell you that tomorrow our program will be perfect! I am so [angry] by my mistake today that I will not repeat it tomorrow -- you can be sure!"

Zhang and his new partner were, of course, much watched upon. They skated first in the short program. Zhang, who can be credited to have created the "hand-down" triple twist with his former partner, Dan Zhang, was just as strong with his new one. Their program, set to "Live and Let Die," by Paul McCartney, displayed the unison they have started building between them.

Dressed in gold-underlined black costumes, Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov's Interview with the Vampire did not go as well as expected. The Russian pair, who ranked third in Europe last season, opened with an incomplete triple twist and waited for the last minute of the program to land side-by-side triple toes (Stolbova tumbled on hers) and a throw triple Salchow.

They scored 53.64 points and stand in fifth place, more than six points behind a podium spot.